Nobody showed up to my high school reunion.
The room was depressingly quiet. Twelve tables I had reserved for the reunion, and twelve tables sat empty. I wanted to laugh, scream, and cry. For weeks I’d worked out the particulars of this event, and even spent a good deal of money to travel back from Europe, just to be stood up by everyone. “Can I bring you something, sir?” asked a waitress as she stepped up beside me, tugging anxiously at the bowtie beneath her chin. I looked to the woman, maintaining a feigned look of indifference. “Maybe just a glass of water,” I decided. The waitress nodded, a look of pity shifting through her eyes before she turned away, and she headed off towards the kitchen. I sighed and turned back to set my eyes on the white tablecloth and the empty dish that sat in front of me; similarly empty dishes circled the round table. My phone sat beside the folded napkin, and I brushed my thumb over the screen, lighting it for the eighth time in fifteen minutes. Still no notifications. I’d sent out several emails to the group, and not one of my ex-classmates had responded. Bored, I entertained a whim. “Let’s see what these assholes are actually up to,” I breathed to myself quietly as I lifted the device. I pulled up a social media app that had sat in an ‘unused’ folder on my phone, and opened it. I thought for a moment, trying to remember my old password, and successfully logged in on the second try. “Gage Borwick,” I mumbled as I typed his name into a search bar. He was the first person that had contacted me back when I had reached out to plan this reunion. His profile popped up, and I pressed my thumb to his highlighted name. I waited patiently for it to load, but as the page came up I immediately furrowed my brow. The account had been memorialized, his page full of ‘Miss you’s from family and friends and ‘Prayers and Condolences’ from acquaintances. Gage was dead, and looking at the dates of the posts, he had been for at least 2 years. It didn’t make any sense. I switched back to my email and looked through the string of messages between myself and my ex-classmates. Sure enough, there he was, gageBorwick03, saying that he was happy to hear from me and was excited to get together with everyone for the first time since the last reunion; the one I’d missed since I was overseas. A knot formed in my stomach, and I swallowed harshly. I looked over the other names in the group emails, and then, almost frantically, navigated back to the social media app. I searched another name: Alice Kennedy. Memorialized. Killed in a mugging four years ago. Jake Telly. Memorialized. Killed in an accident at work at six months ago. Wendy Greyshaw. Memorialized. Killed during a convenience store holdup seven years ago. My heart pounded in my chest, and I left the spelling of names more to autocorrect than the dexterity of my shaking fingers. Olivia, memorialized. Brian, memorialized. Alexander, memorialized. Paige, memorialized. Everybody. Everybody was dead. Murdered or killed in strange, often unexplained accidents. Everybody but me. The phone slipped from my quivering grasp, landing on my silverware and sending a sharp ring through the room before bouncing to the floor. I felt like I was gasping for breath as my mind raced. Who had I been messaging back and forth with? Who had sent me emails agreeing to attend the reunion from the accounts of my deceased classmates? Who would… who could even do that? My throat was dry. I wanted water. I had asked the waitress for some. Remembering that, I looked over towards the doorway the woman had left through. Somebody else was standing there. They were dressed in all black, baggy clothing that hid their body shape, and had a hood pulled up around their head. A black veil, impossible to see through, concealed their face. I stood from my seat, knocking the chair over as I felt a sense of dread grip me, and every instinct within me screamed ‘danger.’ I kept my eyes on the stranger as I backed away, trying to remember exactly where the exits were so I could b-line for them when I built up the nerve to turn and run. The front entrance was too far away, but there had been a set of double doors on the side of the room. I wasn’t sure where they led but I could at least get a barrier between me and the stranger. I glanced over my shoulder to get a glimpse of my escape route, and in that moment there was a flutter of movement. The hooded figure was fast, and their footsteps made almost no sound. The distance closed between us quickly, and I turned to run as I let out a shriek of desperation. I reached the set of double doors and hit them with my shoulder, but to my dismay they held fast in place and I bounced back from the impact; they were locked. Heat. Heat like warm water from a shower head spread through my body, originating from the small of my back. Then it hurt. I tried to move, but rather than taking a step my legs just collapsed underneath me, and I crumpled to the floor landing on my back. The hooded figure stood above me, a knife in their hand glinted red with blood. My blood. The figure crouched down, bringing their veiled face close to mine. They regarded me patiently, and then spoke in a quiet whisper. “I was wondering who I’d forgotten. Of course it would be you, David. I can’t believe it slipped my mind that you’d gone overseas this time.” I grit my teeth against the searing pain that continued to rise in me, lancing out from the wound at the base of my spine, but I managed to speak. “This… time?” I asked, my voice a strained hiss. “Congratulations David. You’ve won this round… well… technically I’ve won this round, but I always win. Coming in second does have its benefits, though.” I didn’t understand what they were saying. “… Why?” was all I could muster. “Plenty of reasons,” they whispered. “But you’ll have some time to figure them out. Since you were the last one left, you get to keep your memories.” “You’re insane. Please, stop! Help me, I don’t want to die!” I gasped. The hooded figure shook their head. “No, not after I spent all that time looking for you. Now it’s your turn to look for me, and try to stop me if you can. You get one hint: I too, was one of your classmates. Godspeed, David.” Then the figure laughed a breathy laugh through their nose; no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t place their voice. I couldn’t even tell if they were a man or a woman. They raised the knife, holding the point above my face. “Tag. You’re it.” The knife slid into my eye, and for a split second, I knew nothing but excruciating pain, and then my alarm was going off. I sat up from my bed screaming, hands shooting to clutch at my face as I frantically gasped for air. I was breathing, I was alive. I was okay, I realized. I let out a long, shaky breath, and cursed my vivid imagination. I hadn’t had a dream like that years, and hoped my old nightmares weren’t returning. My alarm continued to buzz, and I felt a moment of confusion. What day was it? Was the reunion tonight then? Wasn’t it a weekend? Why was my alarm going off so early? It definitely wasn’t 3pm yet. I pulled my hands away from my face and looked to the left of my bed, where my alarm clock should have been on my bedside table. Instead I saw a wall. Confused and groggy, I looked to my right. There beside me was a bedside table that wasn’t mine, and on it, an alarm clock that wasn’t mine. I blinked a few times, and then recognized them, but I hadn’t had them for years now; about a decade to be exact. I rubbed my eyes and looked around the room. My room. The room I’d had in high school. A moment of panic gripped me, casting away the last of my sleepiness, and I realized that aside from being back in my parent’s house, I should have been in a hotel room anyways. I threw the covers away and pushed myself out of bed, only to lose my balance and catch the wall for support. My body felt different. Familiar, but different. I Stumbled out of my bedroom and across the hall into bathroom, flicking on the light as I did. In the mirror I saw myself. Me. High school me. I screamed. Loud and without reserve, I screamed, and moments later I heard the door to my parent’s room burst open, and my mother dashed out to find me in the bathroom. I gasped as her arms wrapped around me. “David! David it’s okay! You’re okay, it was a dream. Just another dream,” she assured me. I could see her face in the mirror, looking so much younger than she had the last time I’d seen her. The implications of that only terrified me even more. I’d stopped screaming, but was shaking, quivering. The other nightmares I used to have started to come back to me, the night terrors that left me helplessly afraid upon waking. Blood; I always saw blood, and a gun or a knife or a bat. Sometimes a truck or a train. Sometimes I didn’t know what it was, but always something hurt me, killed me, and always there was that veiled face, and that whispery voice. “How many times have I been killed?” I wondered to myself with a quiet sob. “How many times have we all been killed?” My mother consoled me. “Shhhh, nobody’s been killed. You’re okay. You’re just stressed. Tomorrow’s your first day of high school, so it’s normal to have bad dreams. It’s perfectly normal.” In the past, that would have comforted me, helped calm me down, but this time I knew the truth. They weren’t dreams. They were memories. Category:Reddit Pastas